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Open to being wrong here, but secular Judaism has threaded this needle; at least somewhat better than American Christians, no? Secular Jews identify as jewish, don't make bones about their non-belief in the literal existence of YHWH, participate in jewish rituals which are fundamentally religious but often carried on in a secular form. Again, I'm not an expert, but if what I said is loosely true, then secular Jews have a sort of belief in the Torah/Talmud, if not a belief in YHWH, and yet they still participate in jewish-coded social activities.
As to the larger body of atheists in America, I think most of them actually do believe in the 10 commandments, but just don't identify their belief with the commandments as such. I think most of them actually do believe that adultery and murder are wrong, etc. However, unlike the Secular Jews, they don't identify as Christian Atheists or associate their belief that murder is wrong with its likely causal origin (from their persepctive) in the 10 commandments.
This is where I think there is room for maneuver. The atheists basically already believe the underlying moral framework of Christianity but don't identify their beliefs and behaviors as such. What they need is the identity (and some supporting rituals, etc.), the attachment to Christian Atheism, not just atheism, in the same way that we can speak of self-identifying Secular Jews.
It seems to me that secular Judaism is more of an ethnic or cultural identity than a religion. But I don't really know enough about the topic to have an informed opinion. And I doubt that secular Judaism is actually capable of succeeding at the goal you mentioned in your OP: "to take ground among the growing percentage of persons who do not believe in god." It doesn't evangelize and doesn't seem capable of "taking ground."
They may agree with these statements, but they don't give any weight to the fact that they're part of the 10 commandments. And there are a number of commandments that atheists explicitly reject, such as the first four.
They agree with certain aspects of the Christian moral framework, but reject many other aspects. And most of the aspects of the Christian moral framework they agree with are not specific to Christianity and are common in most cultures all over the worlds (e.g. murder and theft are bad).
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What works for a small ethnic minority doesn’t necessarily work for the majority. ‘We believe in the last seven of the Ten Commandments’ isn’t a unifying principle when there’s no common blood, no real other commonalities.
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What secular Jews have that others lack is a recent, living memory history of the Holocaust (stoked by propaganda or not). Jews are constantly reminded of their Jewishness in ways that others are not similarly reminded of their differences from others.
I take your point but secular Judaism arose before the holocost. I'm not really familiar with the details, so I can't speak to how wide-spread or successful it was.
Prior to the Holocaust, anti-semitism was so common, pogroms so regular, that there never existed a generation of Jews that hadn't had direct experience of it, between King David and today. The Holocaust is something I mention because it is signal enough that even a Jew growing up in the USA who hasn't experienced violent antisemitism today has awareness of it.
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